


when you hold the world

by quietmoon



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2020-07-08 01:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19861261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietmoon/pseuds/quietmoon
Summary: You feel like home to me. (for Kelsey)





	when you hold the world

**Author's Note:**

> _cross-posted from[ff.net](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11599505/1/when-you-hold-the-world)_
> 
> how many really vague hidden meanings can you squeeze into a confusing overly emotional jerza drabble asked _no-one ever._  
>  it was my friend's funeral today and i'm so. i'm so. idk guys just someone cuddle me i need hugs x100 whatever

_something in your eyes makes me want to lose myself_  
_(it feels like i'm back where i belong)  
_

Bubble baths are overrated.

Erza wiggles her toes in the water, lifting a leg and letting the smooth bubbly water splash across the swell of her knee, her shin, her lower thigh. It feels good, yeah. But nothing amazing. Nothing she couldn't give up.

"Truth is," she tells the empty bathroom, glancing at the flickering candle by her sink, "I don't know what the truth is. I don't want to love you. And I always do what I want."

The water ripples to the edge of the bathtub and she follows the tiny tsunamis with her gaze. It's a small world, her bathtub, with every movement of her body an earthquake, every surface of her skin grass plains and mountain and desert and swamp; like a tiny globe, but flat – stuck in the mind of a medieval master of thought, her world has corners she can fall off of. She's waiting to fall. She's waiting for something.

"I don't know what I'm waiting for." The candle flickers again. Maybe her breath can be a storm.

Is the ice age inside her? Are the bones of her ribcage branches of an autumn tree?

_Why is she crying?_

"Your shoulders were broad. So broad. So steady."

She's waiting to fall. Closing her eyes, Erza can't see him like the books say she would – but she can feel the tug in her chest, the hidden choked noise in her throat, that burned when she stood behind Jellal and looked at his shoulder and realised she couldn't remember how it felt to rest her head on it.

"I don't want to love you," Erza tells the candle earnestly. Her hand is a reverse meteorite flying back to space as she wipes at her cheeks. "I'm not waiting to fall. I'm not–"

_Why is she crying?_

"You had a nice leather jacket. Looked good on your… shoulders."

Childhood friends should never grow up or move away or show up in grocery stores seven years later with broad shoulders and attractive leather jackets. Bubble baths shouldn't feel like holding a little globe in a treasure chest in your heart. Candles shouldn't be cried to when you're lonely and you don't realise it until a chance to _not_ be alone is thrust in front of you like the end of a cliff–

"Like the end of the world, and you fall off the edge, and you…"

The candle flickers. It smells sweet; like strawberries, like cinnamon.

Her phone, lying by the candle, flashes with an unknown number. She wonders if, in a world where what shouldn't happen does, it might be Jellal.

_if you knew how i wanted someone to come along,_  
_and change my life the way you've done **—  
it feels like home to me.**_


End file.
